


handing out tickets for god

by wearealltalesintheend



Series: Tumblr Prompts [13]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ben Hargreeves Deserves Better, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Overdosing, Pre-Canon, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19106743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearealltalesintheend/pseuds/wearealltalesintheend
Summary: “Klaus– fine. Just. I don’t want to attend another funeral, okay?”“Don’t worry, sister dearest,” he smiles, but it’s not a nice smile, he knows, “everything’s going to be alright.”The frown on her face doesn’t let up, stays put as Diego and Luther lower the casket down six feet under the earth and their father throws the first handful of dirt. Klaus snorts. That was a good pony show, good ol’ Reggie truly has an eye for the showbiz.Diego, though, looks angrier than usual. Klaus gives him another week before he packs his bags too.That being said, he believes this is his cue."*or, Ben dies and life goes on, except for all those that don't.





	1. count the headlights on the highway

 

_ This is bad,  _ Klaus thinks, watching Ben pop off the cap of the orange bottle and swallow three white pills dry.

 

When you start taking them dry, you know it’s bad. 

 

“You were supposed to only take one, you know,” he says, frowning down at his hands because it’s better than seeing Ben reenact Klaus’ early teen years.

 

They're seventeen now. Klaus is supposed to be the fucked up one, not Ben.

 

Ben is supposed to be better than Klaus, to be above all this shit.

 

“And they were supposed to make me  _ not _ feel like shit,” Ben snaps like he never used to, closing the drawer with more force than necessary and flopping down on the bed. His face is starting to relax, slow and syrupy in a way that is painfully familiar to Klaus and sends his stomach into painful knots.

 

He’s got a bad feeling about this.

 

“Ben,” he begins. What’s he supposed to say? He doesn’t exactly have the moral high ground here. “Have you– _is it that bad?”_

 

A thundercloud storms over Ben’s face, alien and foreign, but settling uncomfortably easily. “I don’t know, Klaus,” he shoots back, ice and distant, “there are literal monsters trying to break out of my skin every second of every day. I can feel them writhing inside me, pushing and lashing out. So you tell me, _is it that bad?”_

 

_ This is bad,  _ Klaus thinks again, but says nothing for the rest of the night. 

 

*

 

Luther is being an asshole again but what else is new?

 

Well, the fourth and fifth pill on Ben’s hand is probably an escalation, but hey, Klaus is floating nicely in a cloud of something colorful and sweet he had chased with Dad’s priceless vodka, so it’s kinda hard to worry about anything right now.

 

He smiles, lazy and absent, and watches with a distant sort of gaze as Ben self-medicates for the second time this afternoon. Can he blame him though? Luther’s being an asshole, that calls for some pretty happy pills, right?

 

It’s all good, though, it’s all fine.

 

*

 

Klaus eyes the new orange bottle in Ben’s nightstand.

 

It’s the real deal, like, from a pharmacy and shit. There was a prescription and everything, and Klaus hopes they’ll make Ben look less like he’s a ghost haunting this house, wandering the halls with an empty look on his eyes.

 

It’s been a while since his eyes have looked anywhere near alive and Klaus doesn’t like looking too much into them. Sometimes, especially in the bad trips, he has nightmares that he peers into them and he can see the tentacles flopping around, trying to break out of Ben like a hatching egg, like that movie with the aliens and the spaceship they saw a while back.

 

He also wonders if he should have told their father about Ben’s less than legitimate pills, the ones he gets from Klaus’ dealer. That’s– that’s the kind of thing doctors should know before prescribing shit, isn’t it? 

 

But Ben had sworn him into secrecy and he’s right, Klaus is one to talk, it’s his dealer, after all.

 

The knot of worry stays there, though, clawing at his stomach, even as he tells himself it’ll be fine. 

 

Ben will be fine.

 

Hey, they’re the good guys here, _they’re superheroes_ , right? 

 

And heroes never die, they’re always fine.

 

*

 

The rain is falling steadily and Mom’s pink shoes are splattered with mud, and so is Allison’s and so is Vanya’s. Allison isn’t complaining, though. How weird is that?

 

She’s supposed to be throwing a fit and demanding to go home, that's her MO.

 

Can they? Go home already, that is.

 

Dreadfully depressing, this place. It’s bringing Klaus’ high down and that’s– that’s no good. Klaus’ gotta stay high, up, up, _up_ very far from here, from all of this shit.

 

Funerals have never been his thing, don’t let the aesthetic fool you.

 

“Klaus,” Allison says, laying a gentle hand on his arm. She eyes his cigarette with interest, sniffing, and she has to know it’s weed. Everyone here does, he’s sure. They just don’t care, not today. “It’s– it’s going to be...”

 

She can’t finish the sentence, so she trails off instead, shrugging awkwardly in the end. They all know it’s not gonna be okay. Ben’s dead. He overdosed like they all thought Klaus was gonna a long time ago and how unfair is that?  _ Fuck you, Ben,  _ he scowls, taking a drag in spite,  _ that was gonna be me.  _

 

He blows smoke in the air and it hangs heavy, dissipating quickly in the rain; he passes the joint to Allison, watches her smoke without flinching. 

 

“Too fucked up for me,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets and makes a point not to hear the priest talking incessantly in front of the gap in the dirt. It’s ridiculous, really, to preach about gods and angels to the bunch of kids with superpowers. Klaus can literally see ghosts, asshole, he knows hell is very much real. Heaven, though, jury’s still up on that one.

 

“I can’t do this,” Allison says between a drag and the other, and she sounds bitter enough that the grass under their feet curls into dead yellow shades. “I’m out. I’m leaving first thing tomorrow.”

 

“Good for you,” Klaus mutters, but it’s not bad. He means that, in fact. They should all leave this place before it kills them too. “Good riddance to this shit.”

 

“You should come with,” she offers, passing him back the cigarette, and Klaus sighs, inhaling the smoke and letting it grow stale on his lungs before letting it out. “We could find a place in LA.”

 

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he shakes his head. Allison doesn’t know what she’s saying, that’s a stupid idea. She’s meant for the spotlight, Hollywood and all that crap. There’s a reason she’s going for LA and not whatever the hell city out there. “I’ve got my own thing going.”

 

“Klaus– _fine_. Just. I don’t want to attend another funeral, okay?”

 

“Don’t worry, sister dearest,” he smiles, but it’s not a nice smile, he knows, “everything’s going to be alright.”

 

The frown on her face doesn’t let up, stays put as Diego and Luther lower the casket down six feet under the earth and their father throws the first handful of dirt. Klaus snorts. That was a good pony show, good ol’ Reggie truly has an eye for the showbiz.

 

Diego, though, looks angrier than usual. Klaus gives him another week before he packs his bags too.

 

That being said, he believes this is his cue.

 

He feels Allison’s eyes on him all the while he walks out of the cemetery, putting out his cigarette in a nearby grave.  _ So long, fuckers,  _ he shouts in his head as he crosses the iron gates, not quite ready yet to be this level of confrontational. He'll work up to it, though, he's sure.

 

But it's the strangest thing, when he pauses to cross the street, between a car and the next, Klaus could swear he saw Ben watching him from the other side of the road.


	2. it's lonely out in space

Diego has a knife in his hand before he finishes opening his door.

 

It’s nearly muscle memory by now and besides, he’s always carrying one these days anyway, so when he sees the door to his room ajar, well. A blink, and there the knife is, cold and sharp against his palm.

 

“Klaus?” He asks, furrowing his brow at the sight of his brother lounging on his bed, a trail of mud and twigs and dry leaves all the way from the open window behind him and said mudded shoes dirtying up the sheets. “What the fuck?” is the question that slips first, and honestly, the most valid given the situation.

 

“Oh, hey, Diego,” Klaus says absently like he’s only now noticing this is not, in fact, his room, “long time, no see.” 

 

“Long–  _ Klaus,”  _ Diego grits his teeth, closing the door quietly behind him because they don’t need their father storming in and undoubtedly scaring Klaus off again. “No one has seen you in  _ days.  _ Where the hell have you been?”

 

“You know, here and there, everywhere,” he shrugs. There’s a tiredness to him that shouldn’t be there, Diego thinks, not considering Klaus is not quite eighteen, not for a few weeks, and a skinny one at that. Whatever happened to him in the past days, it’s certainly not been good. And, well, this is gearing up to be a cold, drippy winter and Diego doubts the weather has been kind to him either. “But fret not, dear brother, for I have come back from my adventures in one piece.”

 

“We were worried,” Diego glares, the knot of worry and fear that had been brewing on his stomach for the past week is boiling into anger, a much more familiar emotion. One he knows better how to deal with it. He’s been angry at one thing or another for a long time now, so it’s a lot easier to cope with it than grief or the impending sense of doom that the tiny needle marks on Klaus’ arms bring. “Do you have any idea– we looked all over the neighborhood, Vanya wanted to go to the _ police,  _ Dad thought–”

 

He can’t make himself to finish the sentence. They all know what their father thought.

 

Klaus’ face goes blank. “Well,” he sniffs, swinging his legs off the bed to sit up in the mattress and  _ crap,  _ he looks even smaller in his coat now. Allison would cry, he thinks. But then again, Allison moved out a few days ago anyway, so maybe Diego doesn’t know his siblings so well. “I didn’t ask for that. I thought you all knew better by now. And ‘sides, we’re only here for a couple of changes of clothes. ‘Tis getting cold out there.”

 

“You could stay. For the night, at least,” Diego insists. Maybe in the morning Klaus won’t look so pale and Mom’s waffles will convince him to stay for a while longer. Just until they find him help,  _ real  _ help, not their father’s idea of  _ help.  _

 

There’s a long pause where Klaus drums his fingers in his thighs, but then a cold breeze blows through the window he left open like it would keep Diego from smelling his joint, and he tilts his head to the side, frowning at a spot in the wall. Then, he huffs. “Fine. Maybe it  _ is  _ cold outside. I’ll stay the night, but if Dad tries to lock me up again–”

 

“Dad doesn’t care anymore. He’s pretty much done with the Academy.”

 

“Like he ever did,” Klaus mutters and drags himself upright. He makes it seem a herculean effort. 

 

Before he brushes past, Diego stops him. “I’m leaving for the Police Academy next week,” he says, not sure why he felt the need to inform him. Maybe there are some more words hidden in the middle, something along the lines of  _ I get it  _ and  _ you don’t have to disappear to stay away from this place,  _ but Diego lets them slide. “Vanya is looking for a place downtown too.”

 

“That’s grand,” Klaus smiles, empty and cracked. An open wound of a grin. “I’ll send a house-warming gift.”

 

“Allison’s in LA,” he adds, just to complete the set.

 

“So I heard. She’s living it up with the stars,” comes the snickering reply, and Diego watches Klaus slip away, stumbling to the empty hallway and towards his old bedroom.

 

He sighs.

 

Klaus will be gone in the morning.

 

This house has never been warm or crowded in the least, but in the last couple of months, it’s never felt more hollow. No wonder they are all running away as fast as they can do it without it looking like they’re running. It’s a bitch to live in a graveyard of a house, really.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hey, if you liked it you can always send me a prompt or just come talk to me on [my tumblr.](https://rad-hoodd.tumblr.com)
> 
> and hey? thanks.


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